General

The top 500 Supercomputer list composed at newsscream.com shows that the operating System Linux, still continues to dominate the computer world with its ability to power majority of the world’s fastest supercomputers. But as newer and faster computers are being introduced in the world at very fast paces, the Linux also undergoes some changes, to cope up with the changing computers. Even though these changes are happening, the situation remains the same, and Linux dominates over the other operating systems. It can be seen from the recent study that out of the top ten fastest supercomputers in the world, every single one runs on Linux! This reinforces the leadership quality of this operating system. The number had been 5 and later 8 in the past surveys, but now it can be seen that the Linux fills these lists!

Great Flexibility

Linux is being used heavily for the world’s super computers and it is replacing a lot other operating systems in the list. A study can reveal that many different distributions of Linux have ensured their place in the top list whereas many other names have been thrown out of the list. Another interesting fact is that most of the supercomputers that are competing against each other today use Linux as their operating system. The term generic Linux, indicates the increase in the number of supercomputers using this operating system. It also shows that Linux is being shaped and taken beyond the distribution boundaries, by the people who are into building those supercomputers. It shows that Linux is used both in free and paid distributions.

The cloud computing infrastructure is something that makes latest Linux OS unique and outstanding form other Operating Systems. This is owing to its flexibility and source code availability for tuning and customization. The Open Source OS is another one used by supercomputer engineers as resources that can be varied according to requirements. They can be torn down or expanded unlike many other operating systems. Yet another OS which managed to grow amidst this hue and cry was the Windows HPC. It had only 5 supercomputers in the previous year’s list, but the recent list shows that the number has gone up to six.